Zagatsurvey 2004 San Francisco Bay Area Restaurants (Zagatsurvey: San Francisco/ Bay Area Restaurants) [Paperback]

Zagat Survey (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Zagat Survey (August 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570065357
• ISBN-13: 978-1570065354
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 3.8 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,322,858 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This Zagat guide is NOT correct..., February 17, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Zagatsurvey 2004 San Francisco Bay Area Restaurants (Zagatsurvey: San Francisco/ Bay Area Restaurants) (Paperback)

I agree very much with the other review here. For some other cities, Zagat is on target. They are sadly way off target for SF. No way are they there yet. Top rated restaurants are sadly off the mark...and for areas such as Fisherman's Wharf, the ONLY restaurants included are the way over priced ones. For most neighborhoods, actually, it's only the high priced trendy places that are reviewed. Someone from the Zagat office needs to actuallY COME HERE to SF, and see what the truth is!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not worth it this time, January 18, 2004

By 

Mom of 2 "amg" (San Mateo, Ca United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Zagatsurvey 2004 San Francisco Bay Area Restaurants (Zagatsurvey: San Francisco/ Bay Area Restaurants) (Paperback)

I religiously buy the San Francisco guide of Zagats as I found it to be the best resource. However, the 2004 issue is very disappointing. I don't agree that 24 of the top 40 restaurants ALL being given the same score. Also, one of the restaurants that was named in the top 40 for food was in actuality doing very poorly, brought in a new chef, a new menu, and new decor. There was no mention in the review of this.
With Zagat expanding into other areas like movie reviews et al, it is obvious that the quality control of the restaurant guides is suffering. If you purchase this book I would ignore the reviews and use it for more of a convenient restaurant phone book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars poorly done, September 13, 2005

By 

Sony "Sonja" (SF, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Zagatsurvey 2004 San Francisco Bay Area Restaurants (Zagatsurvey: San Francisco/ Bay Area Restaurants) (Paperback)

I completely agree with two reviewers and I also know the reason why Zagat is useless as far as the restaurant reviews go.They just take summarizing phrases/words out of reviewers comments and then without any context put it in form of text for us to read. How do I know this? I was one of their reviewers. Even when I tried giving detailed reviews, they just picked up some of my comments randomly and used them in the reviews.

Here is another problem with their reviewing process: Zagat just adds-up averages from a bunch of reviewers without first checking the quality of each review-so if some dedicated reviewer thoroughly checks up a restaurant by going there a dozen of times and decides to give that restaurant just 1 star but another reviewer just goes to the same place once and gives it a five star (even if it is the restaurant owner)-the average is set to 3 stars. Then one more person does the same thing and the average gets bumped-up so it is a good idea to use the guide as a phone book and if you want good surveys try other sources such as news papers, web-sites etc.